The mass media in
practically every NATO country have, for months, dutifully reechoed the U.S.
government's one-sided portrayal of the Venezuelan crisis. This portrayal aims at discrediting the
left-wing Maduro government and ushering into power a right-wing opposition
that does not hesitate to use terrorist violence to destabilize the country.

The events currently
unfolding in Venezuela are clearly a repeat of the “soft coup” that the
international media helped promote last year in Brazil. Then, the media relentlessly backed calls to
impeach the left-wing and anti-FMI President Dilma Rousseff on trumped-up
charges and substitute her with the right-winger (and pro-FMI) Michel Temer,
whose first act in office was to freeze all social spending and pay back the
international debts that Rousseff had considered usury and thus illegal.

Now, the same scenario is
playing out in Venezuela.

Italy has shamelessly
joined in the international media campaign to oust the Maduro government
through declarations such as the one recently made by Matteo Renzi, the leader
of the Partito Democratico (the party in power): Maduro, according to Renzi,
“is destroying the liberty and well-being of his people who are dying not only
from hunger but from all the [government] violence”. This gross misrepresentation of the facts was
not challenged by any of the major national newspapers.

As for the current Italian
Prime Minister, Paolo Gentiloni, he – along with the media in practically every
NATO country – has not hesitated to denounce the “persecution” and arrest of
the opposition leaders Ledesma and Lopez, while overlooking the fact that, in
Italy or any other NATO country, these two individuals would have been jailed
long ago for promoting acts of terrorism.
Gentiloni apparently has not noticed the admission by Mike Pompeo, head of the CIA, that his agency is involved in the destabilization of
Venezuela. Nor does Gentiloni seem to
have noticed that it is the Venezuelan oligarchs, not grass roots
organizations, that have been recruiting gangs to create havoc in the streets
for over 100 days, burn down pro-government neighborhoods, attack the police –
on occasion with bombs – and bring the
country to a standstill.

The only criticism that
Gentiloni and the international media seem to be able to make is of Maduro's
“aim for dictatorship” supposedly behind the creation of a Constituent Assembly
charged with rewriting the constitution and ratified by the favorable vote of a
large part of the population. Indeed,
even before the Assembly has convened to write a single change, the U.S., Italy
and other NATO countries have declared they will refuse to recognize whatever
document is produced.

Clearly the economic wars
waged by the U.S. and the Venezuelan oligarchs, combined with a century of
extractivism and declining oil prices, have left Venezuela in economic
chaos. But as we can see from the case
of Brazil (which suffers from similar economic chaos), in South America ousting
a left-wing social spending government and bringing to power the right-wing
opposition – and their wealthy pro-austerity backers – does not lead to greater
economic stability, but only to increased economic chaos and corruption. And it certainly does not lead to greater
social justice or peace.

The NoWar Network in Rome
therefore condemns the unilateralism of the Italian government and of the
governments of the other NATO countries which have dutifully joined the
Washington-led campaign to destabilize Venezuela.

It should be remembered
that NATO is the primary cause of wars and political instability in the world
today, from Afghanistan to Libya to Syria to Ukraine – wherever a local
government refuses to bow to the dictates of Washington.

Indeed, the NoWar Network
wishes to express the debt of gratitude that we all owe to Venezuela and to the
other countries of the Alba Alliance (Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador) in
opposing, over the years, in the General Assembly of the United Nations and
elsewhere, the NATO wars of aggression and attempts at destabilization. Against the Axis of War, Venezuela, and the
other four South American countries just mentioned, constitute a genuine Axis
of Peace.